I mean, of course celebrated modern film maker Candice Breitz has a website, it just never occurred to me to find it before today. I had read about her in several magazines, but didn’t experience her work first hand till last Fall when Paul and I visited New Orleans. When I saw a small article in the new issue of Art in AmericaI got to googling, and am so glad I did!
Though Breitz has experimented with several different video and photographic themes, she is most famous for her large scale installation tributes to modern pop singers. Each installation features 30 television screens stacked in a 5X6 grid which have synchronized videos playing of people singing along to recordings of different performers. The subjects in each video hear the music through earbuds so that in the resulting video the only audio track the viewer experiences is that of the sing along. Each of the singers were videotaped separately of each other, and as a result strange and unexpected harmonies are created,
The one Paul and I saw in New Orleans was titled “Legend”, focusing around the work of Bob Marley. It was, in a word, overwhelming. The screens were placed in an otherwise blackened room, with the volume blasting. The tall stack of screen looming impendingly over you seemed almost shrine-like. I found that the most captivating moments in the installation would occur during musical interludes and pauses in the song where the singers would all suddenly and in unison become silent, leaving you surrounded by other spectators in a deafeningly quiet space.
Each of these installations features an entire albums worth of songs, but on Breitz’s website she only includes one of the songs off of each. My favorite video is to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, which you must must MUST see.. I would have loved to post it directly, but the site is all in flash and I couldn’t imbed it.
So, if you want to have your mind blown, just follow these directions:
Go To:
http://www.candicebreitz.net/
click: Work
then click: Video
then click: Queen
Austin based photographer Sarah Wilson‘s most recent project, Blind Prom, documents the 2008 senior prom at The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The photos, which include both candid documentary style pieces as well as more formal portraiture, capture the uneasiness with which teenagers transition into adulthood. By documenting blind teens, Wilson is able to catch moments that this normally trepidatious and self concious age group may have otherwise hidden from the camera. 
